Summary
Though most of her village has burned to the ground and
her family has been burned to death by the American soldiers, a
Vietnamese girl of fourteen dances through the wreckage. The men
of the platoon cannot understand why she is dancing. Azar contends
that the dance is a strange ritual, but Dobbins insists that the
girl probably just likes to dance.
Later that night, Azar mocks the girl’s dancing by jumping
and spinning, putting his hands against his ears and then making
an erotic motion with his hips. Dobbins grabs Azar from behind,
carries him over to the mouth of a well, and threatens to dump him
in if he doesn’t dance properly.
Analysis
“Style,” like “Church,” concerns the contrast and ambiguity
of good intentions and ill intentions. In this story, Henry Dobbins rebukes
Azar for his insensitivity by hanging him over the mouth of a well.
Yet the moral ambiguity of the story remains—a few moments earlier,
Dobbins helps destroy an entire village. He is hardly occupying
a moral high ground. Even so, Dobbins, more than Azar, retains some
moral beliefs. In this case, he thinks it cruel to mock those who
have been tortured—even though he is partly responsible for this
torture.
The Vietnamese girl’s dancing despite the lack of music
makes clear an innate human ability to find pleasure even during
moments of abject horror. Henry Dobbins, like many soldiers, and
like the “typical American” to whom O’Brien compares him in “Church,” doesn’t
want to explore the human side of the Vietnamese because he doesn’t
want to confront the guilt of inflicting pain on them. Their plight
seems irrelevant to his mission, and by keeping the girl at enough
of a distance that she remains a phenomenon rather than a real person
profoundly affected by their actions, the soldiers can continue
on their mission with a relatively clear conscience. Nevertheless,
when Azar mocks the girl’s dancing and wonders at her attempt to
find joy or distraction from the horrors surrounding her, Dobbins
discourages him. He may think the girl’s dancing a strange reaction
to such horror, but he also thinks the soldiers owe some small respect
to the people they have so irrevocably harmed.
All of the men are too caught up in the situation to realize
that the girl’s dancing is similar to Dobbins’s carrying his girlfriend’s
stockings around his neck—both seemingly nonsensical actions serve
as a salve to the wounds of the war. But just as Dobbins’s stockings
cannot actually deflect a bullet or a round of mortar, the girl’s
dancing cannot bring back her family, her village, or life as she
knew it before the war.
